ONE by Mithila Sarma with Pradeepa Sivanthiran, Shyla Shanmugalingam and Abhiram Sahathevan

The Veena is a stringed lute instrument, which is also the oldest within the South Asian tradition and often overshadowed by its North Indian cousin, the Sitar. Each individual instrument has its own tonal quality, style and timbre.

In One, Mithila Sarma, looks at creating a new sound to carnatic music by opening up structures to include chords, harmonies and counter-melodies, not common within the genre. Most compositions in carnatic music are composed for Vocals, therefore not exploring the full range of the instrument; however, ‘ONE’ focuses on the Veena alone, bringing an ensemble of three Vainikas (veena players) together to experiment and push the limits of the instrument’s unique bass tones, multi-octave sounds and rich gamakas.

Mithila Sarma is a London born South Asian classical musician trained in East London with further training from India since the age of seven. She represents a growing number of musicians from the South Asian heritage training in South Asian classical music, looking at exploring new ideas within the genre.

Mithila is joined by Shyla Shanmugalingam and Pradeepa Sivasanthiran on veena and on percussion by Abhiram Sahathevan